


if it had to perish twice

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 5a, Dark Emma, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 07:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5082880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Emma’s darkness moves like a slow chill, creeping up into her so gradually that she doesn’t notice until her veins are ice. Regina’s seen it– seen the moments when she stops fighting and something ugly plays at the corners of her lips, seen the moments when she’s weakened and terrified of herself and too stubborn to tell anyone what’s going on.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Sometimes it’s like watching Mother, a smile on her face as she relishes her own cold, as she dismisses concepts of dark and light in favor of power.</i></p><p> </p><p>[After 505 in both timelines, Emma pays Regina a visit in bed.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	if it had to perish twice

She’s curled up in her bed in Camelot, Daniel’s death still fresh in her mind, and there’s a sound like a whisper and a dip in the bed. For a moment, she forgets herself. Mother had sat like that at the end of that day, had wiped away her tears and crooned her name and whispered,  _Love is weakness. I will give you strength._ And she’d hated and loved her in equal measure.

But this isn’t Mother. “Shouldn’t you be with Merlin?” she says, voice rough with tears still. 

Emma’s hand ghosts over her hair, a thumb catching one of her tears. “I heard you crying,” she murmurs. “I  _felt_ it, really. I don’t know how. But I couldn’t think about anything else.” It’s surprisingly earnest from her. There’s an air of vulnerability to this new Emma, the one who’d sacrificed her soul for Regina and now battles dark impulses. Regina remembers magic making her hard, not soft, but she’d been soft to begin with when she’d been–

“You’re remembering Daniel,” Emma says, pulling up her legs onto the bed. She’s propped up behind Regina, elbow on her pillow, and she lies behind her as her thumb carefully traces Regina’s tears. “I’m...I’m so sorry,” she says, faltering at the end of the word.

Regina shakes her head, twisting to look at Emma. “You couldn’t have known it wouldn’t work.” Emma’s eyes are open and fragile, pleading for forgiveness even as Regina grants it again. “We did what we had to do.” 

“Right.” For a moment, Emma’s eyes dim, and Regina takes her hands from where they wander over Regina’s face and holds them between them on the bed. “I...” Emma hesitates again, words unspoken at the edges of other words. “I’m just cold,” she says, a non sequitur Regina grasps better than anyone else.

“I was hot,” she says. She’d burned like a furnace, reveled in violence and chaos and fear when she’d been the Evil Queen. She’d had fire in her veins and it had all moved so fast, so dangerously, and she’d never even dared to pause and think.

Emma’s darkness moves like a slow chill, creeping up into her so gradually that she doesn’t notice until her veins are ice. Regina’s seen it– seen the moments when she stops fighting and something ugly plays at the corners of her lips, seen the moments when she’s weakened and terrified of herself and too stubborn to tell anyone what’s going on.

Sometimes it’s like watching Mother, a smile on her face as she relishes her own cold, as she dismisses concepts of  _dark_ and  _light_ in favor of  _power_.

Sometimes– “You’re still pretty hot,” Emma says, a shaky laugh emerging from her throat– sometimes it’s nothing like Mother and Regina is ashamed that she’d ever made the comparison. 

“Come here,” she says, a lifetime of Henry in her arms behind her. Emma shifts, watching her with eyes that have lightened to grey-green, and Regina lays her blanket over them both. Emma lowers her eyes and Regina rolls over, her back to Emma again, and says, “You said earlier that Robin healed me.” 

“Yeah.” Emma snuggles in closer, her hand cold as it splays across Regina’s waist. Before Camelot, they’d never done  _this_  before, this intimacy of the two of them entwined together. (The first time they’d done it here, it had been because Emma had collapsed on Regina’s bed, and only when it had happened twice had she realized that Emma had been going after the dagger. Regina knows better than most what it’s like living in a home with a ticking time bomb, but she’d sat up beside her the first time and read from one of the Tomes of Merlin until Emma had fallen asleep on her lap.) Regina refuses to consider what this new closeness means beyond mutual dependency. 

“Robin,” Emma prods her, a note of ice in her tone. 

Regina doesn’t comment on it. Regina doesn’t comment on a lot of what she wants to when Emma speaks, and Regina doesn’t even know if she wants to comment on Emma’s statement about Robin earlier that night. “You were wrong,” she says, and she doesn’t know how to expand on it.  _My happy ending is finally feeling at home in the world,_ she’d said just before the darkness had taken Emma, but it’s still not quite... 

“Yeah?” Emma breathes, and Regina turns. Emma is right up against her now, brushing Regina’s hair out of her face and her eyes expectant and fearful. Emma leans forward and brushes a finger along Regina’s lips, her other hand reaching up to trace where the last of the tears have crystalized in the freezing night air. 

Regina flinches back in surprise and Emma retracts her hands. “I’m just so cold,” she says again, shivering into the blanket. “I’m sorry. I’m–” 

Her eyes aren’t wide open anymore. They’re translucent, like a storm of fog has covered up all her secrets, and she surges forward as Regina does and kisses her. Their legs tangle together, their hands cling to curves and skin and jaw, and Emma holds her desperately with every chilled inch of her and kisses and kisses until they’re both flushed and warm. Regina waves a hand and Emma is dressed only in her underclothes, and she runs heated hands over her as Emma gasps and arches closer, pressed against her until they’re both enveloped in the body heat trapped under the blanket.

They don’t make love. Or  _fuck_ , whatever they might call it. They curl together and Regina presses kisses to Emma’s bare shoulders and neck and nose, and Emma whimpers,  _cold, cold, I’m sorry, cold,_ a series of confessions that say nothing at all. 

In the morning, Emma is gone from Regina’s bed, and she’s dressed in white and leaning on Hook’s arm as she speaks to Merlin about a voyage together. She doesn’t look back at Regina once, but Regina touches her hand for a moment and she shivers.

 

* * *

 

She’s curled up in her bed in Storybrooke, Daniel’s death still fresh in her mind, and there’s a sound like a whisper and a dip in the bed. For a moment, she forgets herself. Mother had sat like that at the end of that day, had wiped away her tears and crooned her name and whispered,  _Love is weakness. I will give you strength._ And she’d hated and loved her in equal measure.

But this isn’t Mother. “You aren’t going anywhere near him,” she says, tears dulling the steel in her voice. “I’ve set up wards–” 

“I didn’t come for Henry,” Emma says, sliding into the bed behind her as though they’ve done it a thousand times, with all the careless impudence of the Dark One.

“Then what did you come for?” It’s like a scene from a dimly-recalled dream, a dream where she’d been the villain and Emma the hero and Emma didn’t manipulate their child for her own purposes like Mother had. In which Emma hadn’t given Regina every reason to lose faith in her and cry furious sobs at what they’d lost.

She refuses to turn and face Emma, but Emma’s finger traces the path of a tear and scoops it up, brushing it away. “You,” she says. “I find that your tears are still...distracting.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” Regina demands, unimpressed. “Did you watch  _The Silence of the Lambs_ to upgrade your official serial killer image?”

Emma laughs, restrained but amused, her head brushing against Regina’s back. Regina says, “The whole crawling-into-bed-with-women bit is really more than enough for that.” 

“I thought that just made me comfortable with my fluid sexuality,” Emma purrs, and Regina tingles with something that is certainly not fear. And yes, Emma is definitely nuzzling her neck now, eliciting goosebumps with her cool lips. “We did this all the time in Camelot.” 

“Liar.” But there’s a certain familiarity to it that Regina can’t place, to Emma curled up around her with a comforting hand on her waist, to Emma pressing kisses to her neck like they’re–  _familiar_. Like they’re something more than estranged friends. “You can’t just...show up after I’ve ordered you to leave and crawl into my bed like you think that I’ll forgive you. Not after what you’ve done.” 

“You were crying,” Emma says. A finger dips down to catch another tear before it springs free. “For Henry?”

Regina doesn’t respond, and Emma ventures, her voice breaking its careful modulation, “For me?” 

“I would have given you a thousand second chances,” Regina whispers. “I would have forgiven you a thousand times and helped you keep trying each time that you’d failed. But you don’t want that, do you?” She’d never gotten all that caught up in the savior hype, but she’d lingered instead on a burning building, on Emma appearing within a cloud of smoke and hauling her out,  _that’s what good people do._

Emma’s been her hero for far too long for her fall not to be accompanied by heartbreak. Emma had called a mass of whirling darkness to her to protect Regina yet again. Emma deserves all the support that Regina can offer her, if she’d only take it. 

Emma has turned to ice, sets horses free and snatches hearts and Regina presses an instinctive hand to Emma’s chest, exhaling as she feels her heart pumping beneath it. “You don’t want to be given more chances. Not yet.” 

“Yet,” Emma echoes, scoffing into her shoulder as she peels Regina’s nightgown off of it. “Haven’t you noticed that I’m irredeemable?”

Regina tilts her head, baring her neck so Emma can have better access to it. It’s instinctive, as natural as diving headfirst into the belly of the beast. “You think you’re the only one?” she says hoarsely, and Emma rears back. 

“No,” she says, and she sounds uncertain, like she doesn’t know if she’s meant to encourage Regina on that vein or deny it. It’s just as it had been when the Fury had attacked, Emma snapping out insults like a challenge she’d wanted Regina to rise to, and Emma still doesn’t seem to know.  _Dead or alive, Emma? Which way do I pose a greater threat to you?_

“I loved my mother,” Regina says dully. “I hated her, too. I think I could love and hate you just the same.” 

“No,” Emma says again, and Regina turns to see the panic in her eyes. “No, don’t you  _dare_ compare me to her. I’m not– I did it for good reason. I’m making it better now.” 

“Love is weakness,” Regina echoes her mother, and watches the cold panic turn to fire in Emma’s gaze. “Isn’t that true now more than ever?” Henry is the reason for Emma’s rejection, the reason Emma has crawled into her bed. Emma comes here for comfort and empty threats as much as she comes here for Regina’s tears.

“Love is strength,” Emma snarls, and she kisses like fire and ice, drawing out death and bringing Regina to life at once. She bites her shoulder, presses a hand against Regina’s abdomen to hold her back and another to her hip to draw her closer. Regina cups Emma’s cheeks and kisses her and kisses her and kisses her until she can breathe again, wrapped in the embrace of the Dark One.

“Well,” she says, and wariness and need in her heart clamor for her attention. This feels like hope. It feels like despair. It feels like  _no more chances, not yet,_ and  _yet_ is a magical word that can destroy them both. “All right, then.” 


End file.
